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Child, Bride, Mother: Nepal

By STEPHANIE SINCLAIRAPRIL 22, 2016

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The wedding of 16-year-old Anita in February, in Kagati village, just outside Kathmandu Valley, Nepal. The country experienced a massive earthquake last year, which, as other natural disasters, is likely to increase the rate of child marriage.
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Photographs by Stephanie Sinclair/Too Young to Wed

Rain clouds hung over the Kathmandu Valley in Nepal on the morning of April 25, 2015, soaking the hillside villages. In Kagati, a small farming community on the outskirts of the capital, Durga, 25, was boiling potatoes from his field, when a deafening noise rang out and his house began to shake violently. He and his wife, Niruta, 23, ran across the wildly shifting ground, but then he stopped in his tracks — in the confusion, the couple had left their newborn daughter inside. “I grabbed her and quickly jumped off the terrace on the hill,” he recalled. The house collapsed behind him. “One second later and the child and I would have been killed. That day we were lucky.” Many others were not.

Nepal had suffered a 7.8 magnitude earthquake that killed more than 8,000 people and left hundreds of thousands, like Durga and Niruta, homeless.

I first met the young couple on their wedding day, eight years earlier. They were just 14 and 16 years old. Nepal has one of the highest rates of child marriage in the world — 41 percent of girls and 11 percent of boys marry before age 18. That day, theirs was just one of several adolescent weddings held in the village temple. Durga’s father hadn’t liked the idea of his son’s abandoning his education and marrying young, but after Durga’s mother died, the family needed help in both the home and the fields. So they found a suitable young bride.

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Niruta, 14, at her wedding to Durga, 16, in 2007.
The vice principal at the local school, Charkraman Shrestha Balami, says, “It is certain that people who marry early will be caught in the vicious cycle of poverty.”
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Stephanie Sinclair/Too Young to Wed

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Niruta now has three children. Here, she breastfed her youngest child, 11-month-old Kusum, inside their shed, where she spends the majority of her time caring for her children and animals.
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Stephanie Sinclair/Too Young to Wed

When I returned to check in on the young couple in 2014, the long days spent farming along the impossibly steep slopes had aged them. Yet they were determined to give their children, then 5 and 8, a better life. “I will not let them marry early,” Durga told me. “If they don’t study, they will become like us — or worse.”

He was right to worry. In the wake of natural disasters, rates of child marriage increase. How this happens became clear to me in February, when I visited the couple again, this time to see how they had fared since the earthquake.

They had barely been able to cope with life’s ordinary hardships, let alone an earthquake. Niruta told me that some months before the tremors, she had discovered she was pregnant with her third child. Without telling her husband, she attempted to have an abortion, a common recourse for girls who are forced to marry young and never learn about family planning. The procedure led to extensive blood loss, and Niruta feared for her life.

“I had pain all over my stomach,” Niruta explained. “I cried, saying, ‘I am about to die!’ ” The fetus remained unharmed, and six months later, she realized that she was still pregnant. She delivered a baby girl just weeks before the earthquake.

Shortly afterward, Durga’s father died after a three-year battle with cancer. Attempts to treat his illness left the couple with crippling debt. Making matters worse, the father had been in the middle of a legal battle over farmland he bought in a handshake deal. Young, uneducated and inexperienced, Durga and Niruta lost the case, and half their land — a devastating blow.

Add to all of this a catastrophic earthquake, and one can easily see how hopes for their children’s futures can be dashed. “I’m ashamed to say, at that time, we didn’t even have food to eat,” Durga said. Beside him sat his oldest child, Sumitra. At 10 years old, she is still too young to marry off in this community — but not by much.

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A home in Kagati destroyed by the devastating earthquake last year. Village elders say hundreds of homes were destroyed. “People still cry,” said Mr. Balami. Child-marriage rates are known to increase in the wake of natural disasters.
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Stephanie Sinclair/Too Young to Wed

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Sumitra often cooks for the family when her parents are too busy with farming work.
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Stephanie Sinclair/Too Young to Wed

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Durga and Niruta’s children, Sushil, 7, and his sister Sumitra, 10, waited for their parents on rubble and debris from the 2015 earthquake.
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Stephanie Sinclair/Too Young to Wed

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Durga kissed his youngest daughter, Kusum, while Sumitra sat nearby. “Of all our children, he loves her the most,” Niruta said of Durga and the baby. Durga wants her to become a doctor.
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Stephanie Sinclair/Too Young to Wed

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Niruta grabbed fresh hay for her buffalo. She recalled the start of her married life as a teenager: “For the first three months I felt so shy and uncomfortable in his house. But my husband’s sister was in the house. She said, ‘Don’t be afraid. I am with you. I will help you.’ So she taught me everything. If she had not been there I would have left.”
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Stephanie Sinclair/Too Young to Wed

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With the help of other villagers, Durga loads wood and potatoes into the truck while his daughter Sumitra sits inside. He drives overnight to Kathmandu, where the goods are sold wholesale to a market vendor.
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Stephanie Sinclair/Too Young to Wed

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The 16-year-old bride, Anita, watched as the wedding feast was prepared by her family.
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Stephanie Sinclair/Too Young to Wed

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Anita was carried to the home of the groom.
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Stephanie Sinclair/Too Young to Wed

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Sushil, left, was comforted by his sister Sumitra, as they waited for their parents at a neighbor’s home.
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Stephanie Sinclair/Too Young to Wed

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Holding his youngest child, Durga sat in front of the shed he shares with Niruta and their three children, a water buffalo and a few chickens and goats.
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Stephanie Sinclair/Too Young to Wed

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Niruta with two of her children at the shed where she spends most of her time. The family’s struggles include multiple sicknesses. The baby had a bout with severe diarrhea last year. “She was very sick, and we took her to the hospital in Kathmandu,” Niruta explained. “They gave some medicine, and we spent about 1,000 rupees, but it didn’t work. I didn’t have money. She got better after we took her to the local shaman, who told us to sacrifice one black rooster.”
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Stephanie Sinclair/Too Young to Wed

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A film by Stephanie Sinclair, in partnership with the United Nations Population Fund.
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Publish Date
April 22, 2016